11.22.2020 – customs, old-fashioned

customs, old-fashioned
propriety remind us
of how things were once

In an article about the Obama Autobiography, David Olusoga writes in the Guardian that:

“After a presidency like no other, after a corrosively acrimonious election and in the midst of a transition still being obstructed by the incumbent, Obama seems almost like a time-travelling visitor from an earlier age, a man whose antiquated customs and old-fashioned sense of propriety remind us of how things were once done and how far we have wandered.

The Obama of 2020 speaks, at times, with a slight tone of controlled exasperation. He has the air of a disappointed parent surveying the damage wreaked by a raucous teenage party that took place while he was out of town.”

Good gosh, what more needs to said?

Let the after party clean up begin.

I am reminded of a time when my brother, beyond all real reason and counsel not too, took the job as ‘Interim High School Principal’ at the school where he taught.

I mean, who and I mean WHO would volunteer for such a job?

While he held the office there was some senior prank and kids got caught in the act.

My brother had to deal with the situation.

Part of the situation he had to deal with was angry parents who were angry that anyone thought that anyone would be angry over what their kids had done.

Come on.

Kids will be kids.

Senior prank.

Just get over it.

No one got hurt.

No one died.

As I remember it the conversations my brother had to endure went on far longer and caused more angst admittedly than any ‘penal process’ could hope to deliver in the way of penance.

But my brother stuck in his guns.

In the end the kids in question were told they would spend a Saturday scraping, sanding and painting the old bleaches that lined the school’s baseball field.

In a show of solidarity and maybe defiance, most of those kids parents came along and worked with their kids to show my brother up.

In the end the bleachers were painted.

The kids lost a Sautrday.

So did the parents.

Somehow, though maybe those parents didn’t agree, I felt justice was served.

(When I met Obama he voiced his belief in the ‘possibility of America’. But the reality is distressing by David Olusoga)

11.5.2020 – counting counted counts

counting counted counts
one loser but one winner
no prize for second

I remember a conversation in a newsroom somewhere sometime.

In 20 years of online news I have been in a lot of news rooms on election night.

The point was put forward that election day was not at all like a sporting event or football game.

When you watch a football game, the story emerges as you watch.

Both teams start at zero and try to score points and the game goes on.

While it seems that way when watching election returns, that one candidate the other has successful plays and score touchdowns and adds more points.

But it is not like that.

The scores are all made.

The points are all scored.

The points just have to be totaled up.

For the sports analogy, we are watching a replay of the game.

Nothing can add or subtract from the points already scored.

No one surges ahead like a last minute touchdown drive to win a game.

We do not know what the total is but the game is over.

All over but the counting.

In the paraphrased words of President Bill Clinton in 2000, the people have spoken … now we have to figure out what they said.

But thinking of sports I am reminded of Olympic Gold Medal events.

Events were two teams play each other for Olympic Gold.

Boxing, Basketball, Hockey and other head to head competitions where the field is down to two teams or two athletes and they compete against each other for the Gold.

It’s the only time where the loser gets a medal.

Think about it.

In swimming, track, or other such events, there have been thrilling battles for 2nd place.

The Silver Medal IS an accomplishment.

But for some sports 2nd place, the Silver Medal, IS first loser.

You lost.

You lost the Gold Medal.

You get the Silver.

<p value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">Oh boy!Oh boy!

I remember they used to play a basketball game between the two teams that lost in the first round of the Final Four.

This lasted until, as one coach put it, the NCAA mercifully ended the tradition.

But I digress.

The counting goes on.

We will have a winner.

We will have a loser.

And the loser doesn’t even get a Silver Medal.

11.3.2020 – There is ruin, decay

There is ruin, decay
winds blow bleak, all gone away
nothing more to say

Adapted from The House on the Hill by Edwin Arlington Robinson

They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.

Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.

I was attracted to this poem for today, election day 2020, as finally, there is nothing more to say.

I have always felt that one of the most forlorn sights is a Halloween Pumpkin on November 1st.

How much more so election signs all across everywhere the day after an election.

All those candidates, they are all gone away.

I looked up the poem to make sure I got the poet’s first name correct and I learned that this poem:

‘The House on the Hill’ by Edward Arlington Robinson is a six stanza villanelle that is divided into sets of three lines, known as tercets, and then one final set of four lines, or quatrain. The lines follow a very simple rhyme scheme of ABA, with the traditional repetition one can expect from a villanelle. The first and third lines of the first stanza is repeated, alternatively, in the next five.

It isn’t just a poem but a a six stanza villanelle!

WOW.

Villanelle.

Never ran across that term before.

Sounds much harder than a haiku but explains why I had trouble getting a seven syllable line out of it when all the lines are six syllables.

The page I learned this on also said, in the way of analysis:

It is meant to be a symbol for the speaker’s past and it’s decay a representative of how he’s losing contact with his own past acquaintances and experiences.

On election day 2020, I hope we aren’t losing contact with our past.

I hope it isn’t all gone away.

Bleak and shrill.

No good or ill.

And I hope it is not ruin and decay.

But we all have to wait.

There is nothing more to say.

10.23.2020 – powerful forces

powerful forces
will take us beyond the bounds
of imagination

Adapted from the line:

Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.

The line comes from the Commencement Address at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 22, 1964, delivered by President Lyndon Johnson.

It is an address known to history as the “Great Society Speech.”

According to Wikipedia the Great Society was “New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation were launched during this period. The program and its initiatives were subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s and years following. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

LBJ said:

Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.

For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?

Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?

Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace — as neighbors and not as mortal enemies?

Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?

There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.

Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country.

They sought a new world.

So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality.

So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.

Over 50 years later it seems like “soulless wealth” is winning out.

Going back to the speech, for better or for worse, this generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age.

We have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age.

We can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

We can.

We can?

Can we?

10.14.2020 – grievous consequence

grievous consequence
what has been done and undone
futile intentions

It is the most grievous consequence which we have yet experienced of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last four years.

Four years of futile good intentions.

Four years of eager search for the line of least resistance.

Four years of uninterrupted retreat of US power.

Four years of neglect of US defenses.

Those are the features which I stand here to declare and which marked an improvident stewardship for which the United States has dearly to pay.

We have been reduced in those four years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it.

We have been reduced from a position where the very word “war” was considered one which would be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum.

We have been reduced from a position of safety and power.

Power to do good.

Power to be generous.

Reduced in four years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now …

This is paraphrased and adapted for today’s affairs of the world from a speech by Winston Churchill.

Mr. Churchill delivered his speech has part of the British Parliamentary Debate on the Munich Agreement on October 3, 1938.

Mr. Churchill was speaking about Great Britain and France and the efforts of the governments of those countries to maintain peace in Europe with Nazi Germany.

Those two countries working with Germany and France had signed an agreement that pretty much dissolved the country of Czechoslovakia and made it a part of Hitler’s Germany in the hope Hitler would be happy.

I adapted what Mr. Churchill to what the United States seems to face abroad after four years of the current administration of the Government of the United States.

I understand what the governments of Great Britain and France were trying to do.

I fail to understand.

I cannot grasp what the current administration is trying to do.

Mr. Churchill said:

“It is the most grievous consequence which we have yet experienced of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years-five years offutile good intention, five years of eager search forthe line of least resistance, five years of uninterruptedretreat of British power, five years of neglect of our air defences. Those are the features which I stand here to declare and which marked an improvident stewardship for which Great Britain and France have dearly to pay. We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word “war” was considered onewhich would be used only by persons qualifying fora lunatic asylum. We have been reduced from a position of safety and power–power to do good, power to be generous to a beaten foe, power to make terms with Germany, power to give her proper redress for her grievances, power to stop her arming if we chose, power to take any step in strength or mercy or justice which we thought right-reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now….“